Literature /
Digital Devil Story

Edit Locked

The original source material for the Shin Megami Tensei video game series and all of its many derivatives, Digital Devil Story is a trilogy of novels written by Aya Nishitani. Written in the late 1980s, there are three books in the series: Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei (Reincarnation of the Goddess), Digital Devil Story 2: Mazu no Senshi (Warrior of the Demon City), and Digital Devil Story 3: Tensei no Shūen (Demise of the Reincarnation). The first novel was adapted into an OVA as well as given a video game sequel (same title as the first book, but with "story" written with the kanji for "monogatari", and "story" in furigana). There was also a sequel series of six novels also by Nishitani, titled New Digital Devil Story, that deals with the aftermath of the original trilogy.

Advertisement:

In Jusho High School, the student body is divided into two groups: the gifted class and the normal class. One day, Akemi Nakajima, one of the gifted and something of a maverick within the school, has the bad luck of being targeted by the semi-delinquent normal Kondo Hiroyuki. The reason? Nakajima had rejected Kyoko Takamizawa's advances, and in a fit of petty vengeance, she manipulated Kondo's crush on her to deliver Nakajima a vicious beating by proxy.

Humiliated and infuriated by the injustice, Nakajima goes about getting his revenge. Everyone knows that Nakajima is an ace programmer, but there's one thing no one knows: he's also an amateur magician. He had previously stumbled into the revelation that magic and programming were more or less the same, and had been building a Demon Summoning Program in his spare time. He'd never intended to use it... until Kyoko and Kondo provoked his rage. What follows is a disaster that can only gets worse before one can even hope that it will get better...

Advertisement:

As you might expect from the original source material for the MegaTen franchise, Digital Devil Story sets the basic foundation for the games that followed. That means it's happy to explore arcane lore even as it jumps into places that will make the average reader wish for some Trope Co.Brain Bleach.

The novels were never released in the West. However, a dedicated English translations of the first two novels can be found here, along with a reedited version found here and here. A French translation is also being worked on. While the third novel hasn't been translated, certain websites have a rather quick summary of the plot.

Advertisement:

Tropes! Come forth!:

Asshole Victim: Both of Nakajima's initial targets, Kyoko and Kondo, are portrayed as rather terrible people. Kondo is a ruthless bully who's violently driven out many students of Jusho High, while Kyoko is a Manipulative Bitch who orchestrates the violent beatdown that sets Nakajima off because he rejected her advances. Averted with Nakajima's third sacrifice, a high school teacher who was simply killed off as part of the Deal with the Devil, and possibly because He Knows Too Much.

Beware the Nice Ones: Yumiko's sweet, mischievous, a really fun girl. She's also the reincarnation of Izanami, and teaches Loki a thing or two about the efficacy of fire.

Big Bad: Nakajima seems like he's heading this way at first. Loki takes that role from him. Set assumes this role after Loki's death, and holds on to it for the second book. Lucifer himself takes the role in the third.

Magic from Technology: By realizing the similarity between structured summoning rituals and programming algorithms, Nakajima wrote the Demon Summoning Program. And was horribly successful. This concept would pave the way for demon-summoning arm terminals and smartphones in Shin Megami Tensei.

Nakajima. Sure, he successfully develops the Demon Summoning Program. Unfortunately, he failed to build in proper safeguards that would impose a contract on a summoned demon. Loki turns on him very quickly, resulting in the deaths of at least half his classmates, as well as many innocent bystanders. To top it all off, after Nakajima defeats Loki, Ohara ends up summoning Set, the most powerful evil god of ancient Egypt. As icing on the breaking cake, many demons have sensed the pathway Nakajima opened to their world, kindling their ambition to conquer the human world. More than just a handful of those demons want to ally themselves with Nakajima.

The ending of the second book isn't any better. Sure, he beats Set and saves the world, but he also unwittingly allows several demons to escape from Atziluth by insisting that he has to save Yumiko.

The third book ends with Nakajima being possessed by Lucifer to kill Yumiko, with Izanami taking over and slaying Nakajima in self-defense.

Orphaned Series: Or more like orphaned translation project. The third story of the original trilogy has gone untranslated for years, and nobody has even touched the New Digital Devil Story novels.

Technology Marches On: AI are programmed via command-line interface, and the first time Nakajima tries to use his program, he gets an OUT OF MEMORY error. The text of the translation even invokes this, when mentioning that most people hadn't even heard of the Internet yet.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy